Fact-Checking PolitiFact On Its "Lie Of The Year"

December 20, 2011 2:19 pm ET

Earlier in the year, Republicans in the House overwhelmingly voted on a budget proposal crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan's radical piece of "right-wing social engineering," as Newt Gingrich once referred to it, aims to, among other things, convert both the Medicaid and food stamp program into block grants, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and end the single-payer health care system known as Medicare. Unfortunately, the fact checkers at PolitiFact have decided that this indisputable fact — that the Ryan budget ends what Americans have long understood as Medicare, and replaces it with a more expensive and inferior privatized health care system that will be Medicare in name alone — warranted their "Lie of the Year" designation. But PolitiFact is wrong. Republicans have voted to end what all Americans know as Medicare. As economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes of PolitiFact's decision, "they've bent over backwards to appear 'balanced.'"